This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: BBC
May 11, 2009
Movie stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio have helped pay towards the nursing home fees of the last Titanic survivor, the fund's chairman said.
The actors, along with director James Cameron, are thought to have donated $30,000 (£22,000) after being asked to help 97-year-old Millvina Dean.
Miss Dean from the New Forest was nine weeks old when the liner sank in 1912.
She is struggling with monthly bills of £3,000 and is in danger of losing her room at
Source: AP
May 11, 2009
CLEVELAND – Deported by the United States, retired autoworker John Demjanjuk was carried in a wheelchair onto a jet that departed Monday evening for Germany, which wants to try him as an accessory to the murders of Jews and others at a Nazi death camp in World War II.
Demjanjuk, 89, arrived in an ambulance at Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport after spending several hours with U.S. immigration officials at a downtown federal building. Airport commissioner Khalid Bahhur confirmed Demj
Source: The Daily Beast
May 11, 2009
Under heavy scrutiny after a scandal over the reinstatement of four Holocaust denier priests, Pope Benedict struck a conciliatory tone in his first speech in Israel, emphasizing the importance of memorializing the Jewish people's suffering. "Tragically, the Jewish people have experienced the terrible circumstances of ideologies that deny the fundamental dignity of every human person," the Pope said after arriving in Israel. "I will have the opportunity to honor the memory of the s
Source: LiveScience
May 11, 2009
The oldest known human hair belonged to a 9,000-year-old mummy disinterred from an ancient Chilean cemetery.
Until now: a recent discovery pushes the record back some 200,000 years. (And the newly discovered strands received a rather less dignified burial.)
While excavating in Gladysvale Cave, near Johannesburg, South Africa, a team of researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand discovered an ancient brown-hyena latrine. Upon inspection, hyena coprolites - fossilized dung - ap
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 11, 2009
The last surviving MP from the Second World War has died aged 93.
Ernest Millington, who was also a bomber pilot in the war, was in the House of Commons for Winston Churchill's VE Day speech on May 8, 1945, after winning a by-election the previous month.
He died at his home in France on Saturday. A member of the Left-wing Common Wealth Party, he was MP for Chelmsford between 1945 and 1950 and, when elected, became the youngest MP in Parliament.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 11, 2009
Pope Benedict used his first speech in Israel to remember the six million Jews killed by the Nazis and try to heal fresh wounds over his reinstatement of a bishop who denied the Holocaust.
The pontiff also called for he establishment of an independent Palestinian homeland - putting him at odds with the new Israeli government.
'Tragically, the Jewish people have experienced the terrible circumstances of ideologies that deny the fundamental dignity of every human person,'
Source: BBC
May 11, 2009
The defendants were officials of Iraq's former ruling Baath party who allegedly killed two British soldiers after they were captured by militias near Basra.
Pictures taken of Luke Allsopp and Simon Cullingworth after the ambush were later shown on al-Jazeera TV.
Faisal al-Saadoon and Khalaf Mufdhi are being tried under Iraqi jurisdiction.
Source: BBC
May 11, 2009
He will spend two days assessing the level of co-operation from Belgrade.
Mr Brammertz's top priority is the arrest of the two remaining fugitive war crimes suspects, including former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic.
Serbia's path to EU membership will be blocked until it is judged to have fully co-operated with the tribunal.
Source: BBC
May 11, 2009
Lawyers for Mau Mau veterans said they had documented 40 cases of torture - including castration - sexual abuse and unlawful detention.
A spokesman for the veterans said in Nairobi they were confident of success.
The UK government has said the claim is invalid because of the time that had lapsed since the alleged abuses.
Five elderly Kenyans - three men and two women - detained during the 1950s insurgency are the lead claimants in the reparations case to
Source: Washington Post
May 11, 2009
PENARTH, Wales -- Derek Eveleigh walked carefully, searching for buried treasure.
"It's such a thrill when I find something -- and I often do," Eveleigh said as he listened to the steady beeps of his metal detector. Not far away from this Welsh seaside town, he recently found 6,000 copper coins dating to the Roman Empire.
"It turned out they were 1,700 years old! Many emperors ago," said Eveleigh, 79, one of thousands of British "metal detectori
Source: USA Today
May 10, 2009
Amid swine flu, sinking economies and other sorrows of the modern world, losing track of when life was really tough can be easy. Lucky for us, we have archaeologists to put things in a little perspective.
Consider life on the high steppes of Central Asia, the Altai Mountains, around 500 B.C., in modern-day Mongolia. Back then, it was the home of the Pazyryk peoples, horse-riding nomads who lived next door to the not-so-friendly Scythians. In fact, the ancient Greek historian Herodot
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
May 10, 2009
Prehistoric flint tools were a surprise discovery at an archaeological dig run by TV presenter Julian Richards at a school in Shaftesbury (Dorset, England). Three trenches were dug in fields next to St James's Church, adjacent to Abbey Primary School and every pupil was allowed to visit them during the course of last week. Mr Richards, a Shaftesbury resident and mainstay of the hit TV programme Meet The Ancestors, was surprised and delighted when the children's diligent digging unearthed a mesol
Source: AP
May 10, 2009
Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest plantation retreat has unveiled its $6 million, 20-year architectural restoration to the third president's original vision as a private place to read, think and spend time with his grandchildren after he retired.
The octagon-shaped neoclasssical home painstakingly designed by Jefferson had been converted to a typical farmhouse some years after Jefferson's grandson sold it in 1828. Now visitors can view it as Jefferson did when he began his sojourns t
Source: 60 Minutes
May 10, 2009
Sometimes history is shaped by unknown people who operate in the shadowy world of espionage. And this story of war, deception and murder has a plot worthy of a John le Carre novel.
Thirty-five years ago, the armies of Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against the state of Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Militarily, it ended in a stalemate, but in practical terms the war changed the map and the politics of the Middle East.
At the cent
Source: The Hindu
May 10, 2009
Clear evidence of the existence of prehistoric humans in Thanjavur region (India) has been identified in the archaeological excavations undertaken by Tamil University. The excavations carried out in the past two weeks on the Tamil University campus revealed clinching evidence on the existence of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic cultures in stratified contexts.
Source: Times (UK)
May 10, 2009
More than 25 of the CIA's war-on-terror prisoners were subjected to sleep deprivation for as long as 11 days at a time during the administration of former president George Bush, according to The Los Angeles Times.
At one stage during the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days, the Times reported, citing memoranda made public by the Justice department last month.
The limit was later reduced to just over
Source: AP
May 10, 2009
The last captured member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the radical 1970s-era group notorious for bank robberies, killings and the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, was released from prison Sunday, a corrections official said.
James William Kilgore, 61, was paroled from High Desert State Prison after serving a six-year sentence for his role in the murder of housewife Myrna Opsahl during an April 1975 bank robbery.
The victim's son, Jon Opsahl, said Su
Source: Miami Herald
May 10, 2009
About 30 black seniors gathered Friday at the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale to start an estimated two-year project to tell the history and achievements of Broward County blacks and black communities. Follow-up individual interviews will be done later.
The effort will culminate in a book and oral histories on video tape.
''The risk is [the history] will be lost,'' said Marvin Dunn, a retired Florida International University prof
Source: AP
May 10, 2009
The girl screaming in a familiar image taken after the Kent State shootings has reunited on campus with the man who took the photo.
John Filo kissed Mary Vecchio on the cheek Monday after they appeared together at an anniversary event at Kent State University.
It was the first time the two were together at the school since May 4, 1970. That's when a Vietnam War protest ended with the National Guard shootings that left four dead.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 9, 2009
British veterans of the "forgotten" Italian Campaign during the Second World War are to take their rightful place among the heroes of the liberation of Europe with a series of events to mark the 65th anniversary of the campaign.
For decades, they have been dismissed as the "D-Day dodgers", their exploits overshadowed by the Normandy Landings.
Now, to mark the anniversary of the fighting, a number of special "battlefield tours" have been o
